Anne Snelgrove: Last week I was pleased to organise for Oxfam a breakfast meeting in my constituency with leading Swindon companies such as Nationwide, Zurich, npower and Barclays, all of whom have worked hard on payroll giving. Does the Minister agree that payroll giving will increase giving to charities and would he encourage MPs to join in?

Kali Mountford: I am very pleased to hear my right hon. Friend tell the House that he has visited Czechoslovakia— [Interruption.] I apologise to the House, I mean the Czech Republic—and Slovakia. I hope that my right hon. Friend, as well as debating the vitally important issue of climate change, also took the opportunity to discuss any innovate opportunities presented to our country—and particularly to John Lightfoot in my constituency, an innovative producer of air-sourced heat pumps that reduce CO2 emissions. Will my right hon. Friend use his good offices to support innovators such as those in Yorkshire who— [Interruption.]

Alistair Darling: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he put his questions. For the sake of clarity, I think that I told the hon. Gentleman and his colleague that it was last Friday when I became aware of the issue. The difficulty in getting information is as I set out. BNFL's medical records deal simply with the examinations. There is no audit trail from the time of the post mortem that indicates who in each case asked for further analysis to be carried out or, at the other end, what happened as a result of the further consideration of the findings.
	The hon. Gentleman asked several questions. I agree with him that it is essential that we have an open process. That is why I have asked Michael Redfern to conduct this investigation as thoroughly as possible. I do not intend to put any constraints on what he considers. He needs to examine all the matters that he thinks are relevant.
	In relation to some of the specific points raised, the hon. Gentleman referred to "this practice". From what I have been able to discern, I do not think that it was a routine practice. What happened was that from time to time the coroner—in the majority of cases—would ask for further analysis to be carried out. I do not know whether he decided to do that because of something that he was concerned about, or whether he was asked to do it on behalf of the family concerned. If we look at the distribution of the 65 cases over what was a very long period, we realise that it cannot be said to be a practice. Certainly, as I understand it, it was not done routinely. However, one of the issues that Mr. Redfern will wish to consider is why the decisions were taken, and then he will draw the appropriate conclusions.
	I cannot give the hon. Member for Wealden any information on whether any of the people concerned were involved in, or associated with, the 1957 incident, nor can I say whether any of them were military personnel; no doubt Mr. Redfern will want to investigate that.
	The hon. Member for Wealden asked about the research. There has been quite a lot, although I understand that it has been more concerned with the methodology used to calculate radioactivity in organs than with these specific cases. However, it is important to note that the records for the individuals involved are confidential. As a result, I do not know—and neither does BNFL—what conclusions were reached for each person.
	The final point raised by the hon. Member for Wealden is very important and sensitive. The company, work force representatives and Michael Redfern are urgently considering how to approach the families concerned to explain what happened. The House will appreciate that in some cases the immediate next of kin are, sadly, no longer alive. However, there will be surviving family members: contacting them must be handled sensitively and, as I have told the company today, quickly. The surviving next of kin will be concerned about what happened, and the right thing to do is to explain to them exactly what we know and what we are doing to find the answers to those questions that are not yet resolved.

Harry Cohen: Are any of the body parts radioactive, and is it possible that BNFL has been involved in a cover-up? I remind the House that Ronnie Kray was buried without his brain. Should not the Government should take a wider look at the Dr. Frankenstein practice of storing body parts?

Peter Bottomley: The Secretary of State rightly said that people need to know, where possible. I put it to him that he should consult the Health and Safety Executive and the royal colleges on the terms of reference. Even though the inquiry may be limited, its implications for research for medical purposes, and for our safety and the analysis of risk, will matter. If people are not able to reuse data in the future, we may find that that has implications—as in the past, when we did not pick up on the dangers of asbestosis or pneumoconiosis or other things that have killed many more people that any possible deaths attributed to the nuclear industry. He should take great care in not letting the matter go beyond his proper purpose into some way of saying that nuclear is uniquely dangerous, when we know that it is not.

Alistair Darling: As I told the House, what is important, first and foremost, is to find out what happened. In my short statement, I quite deliberately avoided widening the inquiry into matters that, frankly, would be difficult to resolve within anything like a reasonable time. I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about the repercussions. One of the reasons why I asked Michael Redfern to look at this matter is precisely because he has some experience, following the Alder Hey inquiry, and he will be well aware of the fact that his recommendations led to a change in the law just a couple of years ago. In relation to the final point: yes, the workers were employed in the nuclear industry, but we need to get these things into perspective. The nuclear industry has had its problems in the past, but it would be a big mistake to draw any conclusions from what we know today or to develop that into a wider criticism of the whole nuclear industry per se.

Alistair Darling: I largely agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is important to reiterate the value of post-mortem examination and further analysis, because only by that can we learn for the future. Many people working in medicine and science could not do their work if they were unable to carry out that research—and most members of the public understand that. The law now is, broadly, that the next of kin have to consent, though there is an obvious exception in respect of coroners. The position now is, of course, different from 40 years ago. As I said to the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor), it would be wrong for us to judge people who were operating in the 1960s by the laws and standards of 2007, as that would be unfair. I agree that it is important to recognise the value of these further investigations. I reiterate that what I want to find out and what the families—and the public—want to know is what happened in this particular case. We should be very careful about drawing premature conclusions for which there is no evidence one way or another. We should address the issue in a measured and balanced way, with all the sensitivity that the situation requires.

Chris Bryant: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make further provision in relation to child care facilities in Wales, and for connected purposes.
	There are people who believe that poverty is a fact of life, and there are people who believe that many should live in poverty because that is the way of the world. I profoundly disagree, as I believe that poverty is not some mysterious dispensation that descends from heaven on some families and not on others. I also believe that one of the first duties of Government is to try to tackle the inequalities between rich and poor, between rich countries and poor countries and between rich areas and poor areas of a country. It is particularly important to tackle the inequity that is child poverty.
	I believe that the single best means that Governments have of tackling child poverty is to enable parents—whether they be lone parents or happily married or cohabiting couples—to work. I think so for two main reasons. First, work brings money into the household, and what better way is there to tackle poverty than by ensuring that money is available in the household? I am glad that the Government have done so much over recent years—through child tax credits, working tax credits and the national minimum wage—to make sure that work pays. Secondly, it is also important for parents to be able to work because it gives them the social contact that is essential for their families to flourish.
	The statistics clearly support my case. International figures for child poverty and parents in work show a remarkable correlation. The country with the lowest level of child poverty is Sweden, with only 4.2 per cent. of children growing up in child poverty. What is the number of women with children in work in that country? It is 76.6 per cent.—70 per cent. of women with children under three and 80 per cent. with children over three. That shows a clear correlation because Sweden is the country with the highest proportion of mothers in work and the lowest proportion of children living in poverty.
	In the United States of America, on the other hand, merely 58 per cent. of women with children are in work and 21.9 per cent. of children grow up in poverty. Sadly, Britain is closer to the American level than to the Swedish level, with 57 per cent. of women with children in work and 15.4 per cent. of children growing up in poverty. When the Government came to power, we were at the bottom—the absolute bottom—of the league for child poverty in Europe. I believe that that was because there was systematic ignorance and deliberate carelessness about child poverty by previous generations of Governments. I am glad that we have managed to lift ourselves from the bottom of the league, but we are still only half way up. That is why I want us to tackle, with increased energy, the issue of child care provision, particularly in Wales.
	I am proud of some things that the Government have done. I am proud of Sure Start and how its rolling out made it possible for many parents to get into work. I am proud of the additional 23,000 child care places introduced in Wales over the past eight years. I am proud of the £12.5 million of European Union structural funds that have been secured to spend on child care in Wales. I am proud, particularly in respect of the Rhondda, of Flying Start—the new scheme now coming on track, whereby significant extra resources of health visitors are being provided. As well as making a difference on child care, we need to ensure that parents with health problems have the support that they need to get into work. Also important are free part-time child care for the poorest members of our community and tackling deprivation in the poorest wards in my constituency. I am proud of all of that.
	Very significant problems remain, however. There is still not enough child care available. Quite simply, there are not enough places for everyone who wants to go to work to place their child in proper child care. There are many reasons for that. One is that child care is not overly valued in society, which is why it is still not valued highly as a career. Many of the people working in child care are on the national minimum wage. At a time of relatively high levels of employment and relatively low levels of unemployment, alternative careers are available, which has made it difficult to recruit people to work in child care.
	There is also a significant problem with buildings. Should we not have a sense of shame about the fact that very few Members could cite a single child care building that was expressly built for that purpose? In other countries, many thousands of buildings were expressly built for that purpose, yet we end up using buildings that were built in the 19th century for completely different purposes.
	The cost of child care is still prohibitive for many parents, which makes it difficult for them to make the choice to work. There is still a lack of flexibility. Many child care facilities insist that parents have to use them for a full week rather than just two days. Parents say that they want only part-time child care and if they cannot have it, they cannot decide to go into work. We need to meet more accurately the pattern of work by which people live their lives. That often means making provision close to home and close to places of work. Many people in the Rhondda who may work in Cardiff, Newport, Swansea or elsewhere need very flexible arrangements if they are to take the opportunity of going into work.
	We also need to make it possible to cope with crises. Many lone parents who have courageously gone off benefits and into work with excitement and glee are able to cope with the expected crises of the year, such as school holidays, because members of their extended family may be able to help. What is really difficult for them to cope with, however, is the unexpected crisis, when a child or parentis ill. That is why the new idea espoused by the Welsh Assembly Government, to which Labour is committed in its manifesto for Wales, is so important. I refer to the idea of having mobile mammas who will be able to provide the crisis support for child care at the moments when lone parents really need it. It will make a dramatic difference in the years to come.
	Sometimes child care provision does not feel as inclusive of every young parent as it might. One young parent told me that it was great going along to many of the new facilities and everyone was very welcoming, but it sometimes felt like a gathering of the middle classes. Everyone was chatting away about how to cultivate organic pears, but they did not seem to have a proper understanding of how child care might fit their particular personal needs. We need to go much further in making child care available, particularly to those who have gone forward with teenage pregnancies.
	Two very important principles are relevant. First, there should be no compulsion. We should not be forcing every single parent to put their child into child care and go into work, but we certainly should make it possible for every single parent to have that option. Also, child care should not mean just warehousing. Some people have been concerned about recent reports suggesting that children who have grown up in child care that effectively places babies in a row and leaves them there for several hours turn out to have more social problems later in life than others who did not go through that.
	The role of the mother will always be vital in brining up a child, and child care should not be an alternative to the role of the mother. It is vital that every child learns the difference between a frown and a smile from one person, and the primary person in that role will always be the mother. But it is important, too, that we give opportunities for people to go into work. It is absolutely vital that we get this right. We should not have a stop-start approach to child care; there should not be a new idea every two or three years, because we must introduce a generational change.
	I wholly support the Welsh Assembly's idea of mobile mammas, because that will make it much easier for young mums in particular to cope with crises. It is important that we investigate whether we should have a universal right to child care, as parents enjoy in Sweden. It is important that we have a recruitment campaign to ensure that more people have access to child care. Finally, there are 1,420 lone parents on benefit in the Rhondda. We must not fail them, and we must not fail their children either.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Chris Bryant, Jessica Morden, Julie Morgan, Mrs. Moon, Chris Ruane, Ian Lucas, Albert Owen, Alun Michael and Mr. David.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A(6),
	That the Order of 16th January 2007 (Pensions Bill (Programme)) be varied as follows:
	1. Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Order shall be omitted.
	2. Proceedings on consideration shall be taken in the order shown in the first column of the following Table.
	3. The proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the Table.
	
		
			 TABLE  
			  Proceedings  Time for Conclusion of Proceedings 
			 New Clauses and amendments relating to the Financial Assistance Scheme. Two and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for this Order. 
			 New Clauses and amendments relating to Part 3. Four hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion for this Order 6.00 pm. 
			 Remaining proceedings on consideration  
		
	
	4. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 7.00 p.m.— [James Purnell.]
	 Question agreed to.

James Purnell: I am just getting into my stride, but I will come to that at the end. The issue throughout has been whether we could make a clear difference between companies that were affected before the financial assistance scheme came into place and companies that are still trading today. We would not want to open up a loophole—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not want to do so—whereby perfectly healthy companies could dump their scheme on the taxpayer, but I will come to that issue later.
	Given that sympathy, the Government have always sought a satisfactory solution for those who have suffered, but there has always been a debate about at what level that assistance should be. As the ombudsman herself made clear,
	"it was the sole responsibility of Government or that the taxpayer should pick up the tab was not what I said... I did not say, 'Write a blank cheque', but organise a remedy".
	The Government have organised a remedy, but let us be clear about why have we had to do so. As the European Court of Justice found during our proceedings in Committee, the then Tory Government failed to implement the 1980 insolvency directive and to protect people's pensions. As the judicial review found, the 1996 leaflet published by the then Tory Government was misleading and maladministrative. In 1995, when the Labour party in opposition proposed creating a pensions lifeboat, the now shadow Foreign Secretary, then the Pensions Minister, opposed it, and this Labour Government had to introduce the PPF.
	The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) said during his winding-up speech yesterday that there was no need to introduce a pension lifeboat in 1995. If he and the Conservative party had taken our advice, there would be no need to introduce one now, and we needed to wait for a Labour Government to do so. The Government had previously defended that Tory record, but those court cases have made it clear that those actions were wrong, and we have therefore reconsidered the level of the financial assistance scheme.
	By contrast, the Conservative Front Benchers have always resisted putting more taxpayers' money into FAS. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) said in the House that
	"at no stage have the official Opposition ever committed taxpayers' money to this issue above and beyond what the Government have already committed."—[ Official Report, 27 June 2006; Vol. 448, c. 175.]
	We look forward to finding out whether they will support the money that we are putting in, but there is a very clear difference for people between the Conservative amendments, which would try to find money by taking it from one set of pensioners and giving it to another, and our amendments, which will guarantee money from the taxpayer to get to at least 80 per cent. of people.

James Purnell: That is absolutely right; it is the trustees who we are encouraging to ask for payments. I have written to a number of them, which has helped in certain cases. I encourage all Members of the House who are aware of schemes in which there are delays to contact the trustees. Some are very good and some have been too slow. The right way to seek to get more money for people is to encourage the trustees to apply for initial payments.
	I want to pay tribute to Community and Amicus for their tireless work at the forefront of the campaign on this issue. They have been joined in that by many Members in the House, including my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne), for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn), for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan), for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt), for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), for St. Helens, North (Mr. Watts) and for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith), and my right hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig). That list shows the strength of feeling in the House about this policy. We believe that 80 per cent. of the funding is the right amount for the public purse to bear.
	New clauses 24, 26 and 27 all call for the taxpayer to fund FAS assistance at the same level as the pension protection fund, which would essentially be 90 per cent. with some limited indexation. What is the Tory position on the new clauses? We look forward to finding out later. We have a clue, however. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge has obviously been pestering the shadow Chancellor for more money. We had evidence of that in yesterday's debate, when it emerged that the shadow Chancellor had said that
	"there are lots of Conservatives who come up to me and say we've really got to put more money into pensions".
	Presumably, he was referring to his Front-Bench colleagues. Unfortunately, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge has been slightly disappointed because the shadow Chancellor is obviously feeling under such pressure that he had to say publicly, at the Conservative party conference, that
	"part of the test of whether we are ready for government is whether we can resist those additional draws on public expenditure."
	If the Conservatives vote for these new clauses, they will be failing that test. They will be making an unfunded commitment to an additional £2.7 billion. If they vote for the new clauses, they will be tearing another hole in their already tattered reputation for fiscal discipline.
	Let me be clear: the Conservatives' proposal for a lifeboat fund is just another uncosted policy. They propose to make a loan from the Treasury. What is a loan from the Treasury other than public expenditure? It is a bit like going to a bank and saying, "Give me a mortgage. I am going to find someone round the corner to pay it back." It is a public spending commitment, and if the Conservatives vote for it that is exactly what they will be making.  [Interruption.] Oh, it is a costed public spending commitment—costed, but not funded. That is the problem with the Conservatives' policy. They make commitments, but they have absolutely no idea how to fund them.

James Purnell: I am saying that we have the same intention and that we will make proposals to make sure that what we have said is exactly what happens. I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter, but I am pretty sure that he will be happy with what we have done because our intention is the same.
	We believe that 80 per cent. is the right amount from the taxpayer, but we are not saying that that is all that should be considered. The taxpayer should fund up to 80 per cent. but there should then be a review of alternative sources of funding that have been suggested. The taxpayer does not fund the 90 per cent. level provided by the PPF. There is no taxpayer money at all in the PPF. There will now be nearly £2 billion of taxpayers' money in net present value terms in FAS. In contrast, the PPF is funded entirely by the levy payments of member companies, which are paying to insure themselves against future possible insolvency. We therefore think that the balance that we are striking of nearly £2 billion of public money in FAS and no public money in the PPF, with a review to look at what more could be done is the right one for the taxpayer and for the people involved.

James Purnell: That is a very good point. There is a misunderstanding about this. People think that the sum is a pot of money that has been put into the scheme; it is not. It is a guarantee from the Government to pay at least 80 per cent. We have estimates of how much that will cost, but it could cost more than £8 billion—for example, if people in the schemes live longer. However, the Government are giving that guarantee, which is not available elsewhere, so it is significantly worthwhile to the people involved.
	The right thing to do is to carry out a further review. We are doing precisely what is suggested in new clause 11 and holding a review, which will be led by Andrew Young, directing actuary at the Government Actuary's Department, who helped to set up the PPF and who therefore has real expertise in this area. He will be advised by a panel of leading external experts. The review will provide an initial view in the summer and will then report by the end of the year. I can make it clear today that any extra funding that the review identifies will be put into topping up the financial assistance scheme beyond 80 per cent.
	The review will be able to consider the suggestions made by the Opposition today. However, I say with all due respect that the Opposition have no idea whether the amendments that they have tabled would work. As I said before, if we compelled people to stop annuitising and they lost out, we could be open to compensation claims, and if annuity rates fell, we could be open to compensation claims. The Opposition have no idea whether their amendments would override scheme rules. The amendments cannot be guaranteed to work, so it would not be appropriate to move forward without the proper review.
	Counter-intuitively, the Tories like picking rows with business these days, but in a pretty spectacular example, the Association of British Insurers has come out—even before the amendments are debated—and described the Opposition proposals as
	"robbing Peter to pay Paul"
	and another raid on pension funds.

Philip Hammond: I am glad that the Under-Secretary of State mentioned yesterday, because, to turn to Government new clause 38, I have to say that I am a little disappointed by the speech that the Minister for Pensions Reform just made; he seemed to think that he was arguing in yesterday's debate. The tone today is not partisan. Today, I hope, is about the search for consensus on a solution. As the Minister said, new clause 38 responds to the Budget announcements that the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions made. It improves the scheme significantly for younger members who would otherwise have been excluded, but it does not address the real issues to do with speed of payment, the effectiveness of the financial assistance scheme, and the benefit payable. The increase in the cap will benefit some higher-paid scheme members, but that does not address the issues affecting the desperate people whom the Members most interested in the subject meet repeatedly. We will not oppose new clause 38, because it is a significant improvement and a helpful step forward, but it does not address the real issues before the House today.
	Amendment (a), which the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) tabled, would amend Government new clause 38 by increasing the benefits provided in the new clause to Pension Protection Fund levels. It is similar in its effect to new clause 24. We have two concerns with amendment (a). First, because of the reference to qualifying members, it appears to include only those members who are over 65, rather than those who are over scheme retirement age, as the PPF does, yet that group includes some of the people in greatest hardship. Secondly, we believe that, contrary to what the Minister said, it is necessary to balance the moral case for helping that group of people with the obligation on us all to protect the taxpayer. I shall outline how we think that our proposals to use unclaimed assets, backed up by a Government loan, gets that balance right.
	The amendment tabled by the hon. Lady and new clause 24 simply transfer the problem to the taxpayer. We accept that, as the Minister pointed out, if a loan is made, a residual contingent liability is taken on, but if we are to reach a solution to the problems, we have to recognise that we are all in this together. There has to be a sharing of the pain. The pensioners concerned have to accept that they will receive only 90 per cent. of the benefits that they would have got, the industry has to accept that it will have to yield up the unclaimed assets, and the Government have to extend the loan to bridge the gap, so that relief can be provided right now, while the unclaimed assets are being collected. I have set out the two reasons why we cannot support amendment (a), tabled by the hon. Lady; we urge her to consider supporting new clauses 41 to 45 instead, which have the same objective and would deliver the same outcome for pensioners, but which take a different route.

Philip Hammond: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. The Minister, in a rather niggardly way, criticised the drafting of the amendments at the Dispatch Box. We all recognise, whether we are Opposition spokesmen or Back-Bench Members, that when we table amendments and new clauses we are asking the Government to look at their spirit. I am sure that no one who tabled a new clause today would fail to hesitate to press it if the Minister made a commitment to deal with the substantive issues that they raise when the Bill proceeds to the House of Lords.
	Our new clause 40 approaches the problem from a slightly different angle from new clause 25. On reflection, we have decided that new clause 25 provides the better approach so, if the hon. Member for Cannock Chase chooses to proceed with it, we will support it. New clause 26, which was tabled by the hon. Gentleman and members of Select Committee on Public Administration, does not suffer from the defects of new clause 24, as it clearly includes people under 65 who are none the less over scheme age. It still makes a public spending commitment. I should have made it clear earlier that one of our concerns about amendment (a) to Government new clause 38 is that it appears to exclude members who are under 65 but above scheme age.
	In new clause 26, however, there is a further problem that I wish to draw to the attention of the House. Subsection (3) requires the omission of the provisions of section 286 of the Pensions Act 2004 that prevent the means-testing of FAS benefits. If the new clause were accepted, it would allow the Secretary of State to impose means- testing on FAS benefits. By seeking specifically to omit the provisions that prevent means-testing, the implication is clearly that FAS benefits should be means-tested. I do not believe that that is the consensual view in the House, and for that reason, and because of the public spending commitment that it implies, we do not support it. New clause 27, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), excludes the means-testing problems, but it still makes a direct public spending commitment.
	Since the new clauses were tabled, there have been intense discussions in all parts of the House, co-ordinated by the pensions action group, which represents the people who are outside the House today. There is genuine good will to try to seek a solution. I do not think that anyone, except for the Minister, is trying to score political points. We seek a way forward that is fair and deliverable. I pay tribute to Members from all parts of the House, to the pensions action group, and to the tireless Ros Altmann—her mobile phone bill, I am sure that many hon. Members agree, must be horrendous—who have done so much to bring the issue to the attention of the House and to focus our attention on the way forward. As a result of that process, a series of new clauses has been agreed by the pensions action group and by Members from all parts of the House as the best way forward, and I thank all hon. Members who have been involved. The amendments belong to the whole House.

Philip Hammond: Of course, I join my hon. Friend in those sentiments, and I know that everybody in the House would send Mr. Humphreys their best wishes.
	The new clauses have been tabled in the name of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who has taken a particular interest in this, not least because he has a special constituency interest in a particularly heartbreaking case. They are supported by the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), and by other Labour Members who have seen the need for a cross-party solution. I hope that that cross-party approach sends a message to the Government about the strength of feeling and sense of moral obligation across the House. This is one of those occasions when we as parliamentarians have to stand up and be counted and be seen to be doing the right thing.
	Before I go through the new clauses, there is a procedural issue that I should like to explain to hon. Members. I understand that for reasons of time it is unlikely that it will be possible to vote on more than one new clause in the group. I should like to indicate to you now, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I will, if possible, seek a Division on new clause 41. It is our understanding, on advice, that new clauses 42, 43, 44, 45 and 47 are essentially consequential, and if the House agreed to new clause 41 there would then be an opportunity to consider the other new clauses. That leaves out new clauses 39 and 46, which are not consequential but would do slightly different things. I will deal with those separately.
	I hope that the Government will accept that this is a package and look constructively at its proposals, including the proposal for a moratorium on annuitisation, which, despite the Minister's being so critical, was intended to be helpful and supportive of the review process. There is no point in reviewing the possible use of residual scheme assets if by the time that the review has completed its course and the Minister has considered it the residual scheme assets have all been given to the Pru and Legal and General. That is why we need a moratorium.
	New clause 39 would provide that the PPF board should take over from the Secretary of State the role of scheme manager, for two reasons: on the merits of the case for the PFF board, which has demonstrated its competence by winding up the MG Rover scheme and taking it into the PPF in less than two years; and secondly, as part of a wider architecture in this group of new clauses, which would put the PPF board in overall control board of pension compensation—separate funds, for very good reasons, but under a single administration with single payment structures and, it is to be hoped, administrative savings to be made and efficiencies to be gained. The new clause would achieve its objective simply by substituting the PPF board for the Secretary of State in the 2005 regulations.
	The substantive new clause is new clause 41, which would create the lifeboat fund, also to be placed under PPF management. We need a separate fund, as opposed to one merely incorporated into the FAS. The source of funds for the lifeboat fund would be different from that of the FAS. The FAS is a body publicly funded with taxpayers' money; the lifeboat fund is intended to be funded with unclaimed assets, perhaps with residual scheme assets or some part of them, if they become available, and in the interim to be allowed to go about its work with the benefit of a Treasury loan. The lifeboat fund would be mandated to pay top-up benefits so that people who are being paid under the FAS would be topped up to PPF levels, and people who are below the FAS qualifying age but above the scheme retirement age would be paid from the lifeboat fund. Crucially, it would provide for loans from the Secretary of State to allow immediate operations. Later new clauses would provide for the collection of assets.
	I have acknowledged, and will do so again, that in granting a loan there is a residual risk of a liability to the public purse. However, having considered it carefully and looked at the moral obligation that falls upon us, we think that it is a tiny risk that it is right and reasonable to ask the taxpayer to bear. The costs would be slightly more than the £2 billion in cash over 50 or 60 years, or £600 million net present value, that the parliamentary Labour party briefing document set out, because it appears that the Secretary of State's briefing to the PLP did not factor in the cost of including those who were under 65.
	We estimate that the initial cost of the lifeboat fund—its initial cash flow need—would be about £30 million a year, rising to £100 million in 2033 and then tailing off to zero. Today, the Prime Minister quoted a figure of £2.48 billion in cash, or about £750 million NPV, as the total cost of the package of proposals that stand in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. That estimate does not look unreasonable, although we all recognise that in calculating such figures there is a fairly wide degree of error. I should emphasise, however, that the figure would not have to be found immediately but over a period of 50 or 60 years—exactly the same as the £8 billion that the Secretary of State has committed to the FAS.
	The lifeboat fund would receive unclaimed assets and residual scheme assets if those become available. New clauses 42 to 45 would create the rather inelegantly named pensions unclaimed assets recovery agency. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, who will have recognised in the new clauses a large chunk of his private Member's Bill, the Pensions (Unclaimed Assets) Bill. I am grateful to him for doing a large amount of the drafting work. The agency would be charged with first identifying these assets, then collecting and supplying information to the Secretary of State, and then collecting the assets in. The new clause would provide that the Secretary of State specified the classes of unclaimed assets to be collected by the agency. Our focus is on unclaimed pension assets, including the possibility of residual scheme assets. We think that there is an elegance and a justice in using unclaimed pension assets to deal with a pensions problem. However, the House should be aware that the new clause would enable the Secretary of State, over time, should he wish, to widen or change the scope of the classes of unclaimed assets that could be included.
	The Unclaimed Assets Register says that there is about £3 billion in pension sector unclaimed assets. We are rather more cautious. On the basis of private discussions with companies, we think that there may be £600 million to £800 million of readily accessible pension unclaimed assets and a modest flow thereafter. However, Members who have looked into this will be aware of the Irish experience whereby the initial estimates, based largely on information volunteered by the companies holding these assets, turned out to be understated by a factor of 10 or 15-fold.
	Together, the new clauses would create a framework for a fair settlement at PPF levels, with a single payment mechanism based on putting the PPF board in control of the FAS and the lifeboat fund. Although there would be two streams of funding, there would be a single payment mechanism delivering efficiency and seamlessness for recipients. The system would minimise the risk to the public purse, while a loan would allow for an immediate start to payments to those most in need. It would be flexible as to the classes of asset that could be used, so that the Secretary of State would have wide discretion in managing the process in future. It would deliver the objectives of new clauses 26 and 27 and amendment (a) to new clause 38. As far as beneficiaries are concerned, its effect would be no different, but it would be achieved without placing the burden on to the taxpayer.
	New clause 46 proposes a moratorium on annuities. As I have already said, its intention is to support the review that the Government are undertaking. We acknowledge that there are problems with the use of residual scheme assets but our discussions suggest that there is between £1 billion and £2 billion in the schemes that is not already committed to the purchase of annuities, as well as a further sum, which may be subject to some penalty costs when annuity option arrangements have been entered into. That is a sizeable sum. If just part of it could be released to support the lifeboat fund, it would be a useful additional source. That is worth pursuing and we would be happy to engage in the review that the Secretary of State has set up and examine with him some of the problems, which we acknowledge must be overcome to make the proposal work.
	New clause 47 deals with schemes that are still being wound up and places on the trustees a duty to make interim payments. They already have the power to make interim payments if they choose, but trustees, by their nature, tend to be conservative people. Their inclination to ask for interim payments has been disappointing, as the Minister acknowledged. He has written letters to encourage them to do so. We believe that it would be right to impose a duty on them to make such payments, the cost of which they would recover from the FAS and the lifeboat fund in due course when the scheme was wound up. The new clause also provides for the unlikely position whereby a scheme does not have the liquid resources to make payments and Treasury loans might be made to trustees to bridge the gap while they get their assets into liquid form.
	There is a consensus across the House and with outside bodies that represent the victims of the crisis that new clauses 25—which incorporates what the Minister told us about solvent schemes—and 41 are the way forward. The House today has it in its power to resolve the problem and bring to an end a blot on the reputation of not only Governments but Parliament. We could deal with the issue now. The overwhelming majority of the victims will accept PPF level benefits as a fair compromise. Parliament, as well as the Government, has been damaged by the continuing disaster. Parliament at least now has the opportunity to set party politics aside and do the right thing. I urge hon. Members of all parties to support new clauses 25 and 41.

David Laws: This is an extremely important debate. We have heard two excellent speeches, from the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Julie Morgan) and the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond). We have also heard some useful points from the Minister, albeit in a slightly more partisan tone than we are used to from him. In his opening speech, he commented on what he claimed was a pattern of behaviour by the Conservatives on this issue. As that is not the major issue that we are debating today, I shall comment not on that but on the pattern of behaviour over the past three years or more by the Government. That behaviour pattern was illustrated extremely well by the hon. Member for Cardiff, North, when she described the process undertaken over the past three years as "tortuous". That is precisely what it has been.
	We know that we ended up with the financial assistance scheme in the first place only because of the determination of Labour Members and others in the House to insist on it when the Pensions Bill went through in 2004. We were then told by the Government that that was the only concession that they could make. Further improvements were then made to the financial assistance scheme and, earlier this year, it was announced that the level of compensation would be increased yet again.
	Instead of bringing the matter to a conclusion once and for all, in the interests of those individuals who have lost their pensions, the Government have embarked on the tortuous process described by the hon. Lady. It has not satisfied the pensioners who have lost their pensions, it has not brought the matter to a conclusion, and it has led to a series of very critical reports on the Government—first from the parliamentary ombudsman, then from the cross-party Public Administration Committee, then from the European Court of Justice and then from the judicial review group. Sadly, it is only through that process of criticism of the Government that we have managed to proceed to a settlement considerably better than that first envisaged in 2004-05.
	I do not really know why we in the Opposition are so intent on helping the Government out of their position. Let me say in the most partisan possible terms that what the Government have succeeded in doing over the past three years almost constitutes a master class in how to extract the least possible credit from the largest possible number of concessions.
	I spoke earlier about the implementation of the financial assistance scheme and the two substantial increases that we have seen. Another concession has been made today—a helpful concession, I think, although we do not yet understand all the parameters—in new clause 25, which allows the inclusion of solvent schemes. But does any Member, including the Minister, seriously believe that we have seen all the concessions that we will see from the Government? As the hon. Member for Cardiff, North suggested, they may be forced to make more concessions through the legal process; moreover, those in another place will have to scrutinise the Bill, and given the cross-party nature of what we are debating today, I strongly suspect that they will insist on changes.
	The Government have spoken of the unions' aspiration in relation to the Pension Protection Fund. It is unclear whether they share that aspiration, but amendments tabled by the Leader of the Conservative party, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and others contain many proposals that the Government say they are considering in any case. It seems pretty plain that—either through the Government's being forced to make more concessions, or as a result of policies that they have already put on record—we will end up more or less where those amendments would take us.
	Why, for goodness sake, do the Minister and the Government not do what now seems inevitable? Why do they not deliver for the pensioners—many, as we have heard, in a very vulnerable position—who are waiting for the compensation that is due to them? Having initially been told by the Government that no compensation was possible, over the past three years they have witnessed the tortuous process of the Government's conceding more and more without bringing the matter to a conclusion. Labour Members and others in the House would do a service to the Government as well as to pensioners if they were to bring it to a conclusion today, and not allow it to be dragged out any longer.

David Laws: That is true. Many of us fear that people will have to wait even longer for a solution the shape of which looks obvious to most of us, and which we feel we might as well get on with delivering rather than putting those people through more pain. Moreover, many Members in all parts of the House fear that if we miss this opportunity, we may not have another opportunity to impose a sensible solution on the Government through the will of the House of Commons and, perhaps, that of another place.
	What, after all, concerns the Government? As the Minister said, it is not the substance of the amendments, but the issue of finance. The Government have already moved enormously to deliver a substantial part—now the majority—of the compensation for which we are asking. They say that they want to consider the process of annuitisation and that of securing unclaimed assets. The Minister has acknowledged that the costing figures that he has given today for delivery of the extra element of compensation do not include offsets from tax revenue from means-tested benefits. What does it all come down to, provided that the Government can secure some unclaimed assets? It seems to come down to the determination of the Government, or perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not to concede what in public expenditure terms is a minuscule amount of money.
	The Government's determination on principle not to do anything about that amount of money would be rather more convincing if they had not been dragged through the tortuous process of the past three years, providing first £400 million, then £2 billion and then £8 billion. They are now virtually where they will end up anyway. The Minister's arguments are very unconvincing. Given the closeness of his aspirations to those shared by almost every other Member, he would do a service to all of us—but mostly to the pensioners who are waiting for a settlement—if he were to get on with delivering it. It is fairly obvious that we will end up with a package of a certain shape in one way or another; the question is whether that happens quickly or slowly.
	The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge commented on all the new clauses and amendments, and the hon. Member for Cardiff, North gave us an insight into her thinking on a couple of them. All of them improve the present arrangements. That includes new clause 38, which we have no intention of opposing, as it constitutes a further concession to raise the level of financial compensation.
	The hon. Gentleman said that he welcomed new clause 25, tabled by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), which allows the inclusion of solvent schemes. We welcome it as well. The hon. Gentleman said he preferred it to his own new clause 40, which was helpful. There was some uncertainty in his exchange with the Minister about precisely who would be excluded from the measure that he now envisages in place of new clause 25. I hope that light will be shed on that later in the debate. If there is indeed an element of uncertainty, we too would be happy to leave it to the hon. Member for Cannock Chase to determine the extent of the exclusion, knowing that we have the backstop of another place and the possibility of further amendments if they are considered to be strictly necessary.
	The critical aspects of new clause 38 relate to the other new clauses and amendments. We welcome new clause 24 and amendment (a) to new clause 38, tabled by the hon. Member for Cardiff, North, which improve the position by delivering the PPF level of benefits. We will support them if they are put to a vote, but, like the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, we hope that they will not be the focus of debate and of any vote that takes place. New clauses 40 to 47 also make important changes and additions to the package, which not only make it more financially robust but deliver the immediacy that many of the pensioners seek.
	The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge was kind enough to pay tribute to Ros Altmann and the other pension campaigners who have done so much to shift what appeared to be the immovable object of the Government over the last couple of years and to move the debate forward. The hon. Member for Cardiff, North and many other Labour Members will know of the anxieties that still exist among pensioner groups. Even if her amendments were accepted, substantive points would remain uncovered by them that are covered by the cross-party new clauses 40 to 47, as was explained by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge. The partial inflation-linking issue is dealt with by those new clauses, but not by new clauses 24 and amendment (a) to new clause 38.
	There are other issues. There is the issue of ensuring that people receive their money, that the payment starts immediately at scheme pension age and that there is no further delay, with trustees able to pay the allowance from the scheme assets immediately. There is the issue of annuitisation, which is dealt with explicitly in the cross-party amendments. There is the issue of solvent employer schemes, which we hope will be dealt with by new clause 25 or a decent concession from the Government. There is also the issue of mitigation of the cost to the taxpayer. We understand that the Government are intent on taking action to deal with that anyway.
	Although we welcome the amendments of the hon. Member for Cardiff, North, we hope that as she agreed earlier that this has been a tortuous process she will want us to find a solution today that deals with all the major concerns. She probably knows that the position of the pension campaigners is that new clauses 40 to 47 are to be preferred as they deliver additional benefits compared with the measures that she has tabled—and, indeed, our new clause 27. We hope that new clause 41 will be the focus of the debate. We will enthusiastically support it, and we hope that Members of all parties will also do so if, sadly, the debate ends in a Division.
	The entire process of the past three years has been tortuous, but progressively the minority in this House, and certainly in the Labour party, has been converting the majority of Ministers, with some assistance from outside. There is not much further to go in that process. It is clear to me that through legal routes, steps in another place and concessions from the Government we will reach the point proposed by the new clauses under debate, so let us get on and do it today, and not waste any more time.

Tony Wright: The Bill is in many respects a reckoning with the future of pensions, but it contains within it the reckoning with the past. We all wish that it did not do so because it would be nice simply to move on to the sunnier uplands of pensions policy to come. However, as several Members have said, the fact is that many people are not able to move on as they have lost their pension. They look to this House to do something about that—legitimately because an Officer of this House, the ombudsman. has conducted an exhaustive inquiry to establish exactly what happened and whether there was any Government role.
	I must confess that when I started to think about this matter—before I had read the ombudsman report, and before the Public Administration Committee started taking evidence on it and talking to some of the people involved—I took a different view from that which I now hold. I thought, "Well, the world's an uncertain place and risky things can happen; pensions are fragile objects and we have to live with such events." However, the more I examined the subject the less I could sustain that position. After 1994—after Maxwell—we believed that we had put in place a framework of protection that would prevent such things from happening again. The ombudsman was able to show in detail that in terms of what had been said about that framework of protection—the descriptions of the amount of safety that there was in the schemes—there had been maladministration. That is not simply a proposition of mine; it has now been demonstrated. It has been upheld in the High Court, so we know it to be the case. Therefore, we have moved on from that argument.
	That is not to say that the Government—any Government—are entirely liable for what has happened. That is not true. There is some liability, but the major point is that the only body or person who can organise a remedy and sort out this situation are the Government. The Government have been trying to do so, and we must welcome the fact that we have made huge progress. This is a bit like building a house. Originally, when we began with the financial assistance scheme, the Government erected one wall and said, "There's some shelter" and we said, "But one wall isn't good enough." So they added another wall and said, "There we are; that's better shelter" and it was better, but we again said, "It's not good enough." After that, in the Budget they added two more walls. We have the surrounding structure of a house now. That is vastly better, but we then said, "But we still haven't got the roof on." The Government have responded by saying, "No, we haven't got the roof on, but we know a man who can find the wherewithal to put the roof on." The Opposition have said in return, "We can do better than that: we have got a man who can loan us the money to find the man who will put the roof on." Frankly, I do not care where the roof comes from. Most Members accept that we need the roof on—that we need to reach Pension Protection Fund levels. As has been said, that is a responsibility of the House—of all Members.
	Let us consider the history of this matter. It started with the last Government. Some of the most offending literature in maladministration terms occurred under the last Government. However, the point about ombudsman investigations and all that flows from them is that responsibility is handed back to the House. When the ombudsman system was put in place exactly 40 years ago, the House sensibly decided not to give the ombudsman the ability to impose remedies. She would have the ability to investigate without any hindrance and operate completely independently and then to report to the House. She can suggest lines of remedy, but not impose them. The responsibility for that comes back to Members. We must decide what is the right thing to do. That is what we are faced with in this context. We did not think that the Government had done enough when they produced one wall, or two walls, or now when they have produced four walls. We still want to talk about putting the roof on.
	I know that the Opposition and the Government are terrified of public spending, but there are times when we have to say, "We have an obligation to spend the money to do the right thing—we would like not to spend it, but we have an obligation to do the right thing." I say to both the Government and the official Opposition that I wish that they were both saying that, because the official Opposition are going to some lengths not to say that—but instead to say that they are not prepared to sign up to propositions that commit them to moving to PPF levels. It would be easier for the House if we could test the proposition of whether we wanted to do that, and then worry about the mechanisms for doing it. The incentive to find mechanisms that work would be greater if we had committed ourselves to the objective. That might be the effect of new clause 41 and associated measures, and that is why I shall support them. Even funny money is better than no money at all, and I am prepared to accept it on that basis—although the Government are entitled to say to the Opposition that it is funny money and that they must answer for that.
	On the new clause 25 issue—the solvent schemes issue—we know that there is an anomaly. The compensation available applies only in cases where there has been an insolvency event. That has left high and dry about 8,000 people who have been in solvent employer schemes. We all recognise that they are in exactly the same position in terms of the loss of their pension as everybody else and that there are no grounds on which we could possibly want to exclude them. New clause 25 brings their schemes—we seem to agree on the numbers—into the package that is being developed. The Minister is entitled to say that the amendments under discussion were devised over the weekend in a great hurry, but I can assure him that this one was not. A good deal of time and authority has been invested in it in this House. It comes with some good authority behind it. When the Minister says to me that it is technically deficient, my response is that I do not think that it is because it covers exactly the same kind of schemes that are eligible under section 286 of the Pensions Act 2004. It does not in effect say, "Let's open the door to any scheme that might want to fold to get some protection." It is explicitly contained within those parameters.
	I would be delighted to withdraw the new clause. All I require the Minister to say is that he accepts the spirit of the new clause and, if he thinks that it is technically deficient, he will remedy that down the road. I do not want to be left still not knowing which schemes will be covered and which will not, because that would be profoundly unsatisfactory.

Michael Penning: As a very humble, new Back Bencher, may I say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright)? The work that Members from all parties have done on this issue since I came here on 5 May 2005 has impressed me enormously. I personally praise the work of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) throughout the campaign.
	The issue was brought to my attention when I was a parliamentary candidate in Hemel Hempstead some six years ago. Just after I was selected, the former Dexion workers committee came to see me. They asked me to read their file—it was about 6 in deep—and give them my opinion on whether they had been treated fairly and with dignity, whether natural justice had been done and whether trust in Parliament and pension schemes could ever be restored.
	I read every word, and when I went back to the committee I was tested. They did not trust me: they did not trust any politician. I do not think that they do today. They wanted to know whether I had read and understood the file, and whether I agreed with them that no matter who was in power, or who had made the mistakes, they had been treated appallingly. At the time, there were just over 700 of them, mostly men, but some ladies, who had paid into a scheme, at one stage, compulsorily. Following legislation, membership of the scheme was voluntary, but nobody left it because it was very good. Some people had paid in for 35 years and more.
	The campaigners had huge dignity, but they had already been around the country taking their clothes off in public. They were middle-aged men and women who had worked all their lives, done the decent thing and did not want to scrounge off the state. They did not want means-tested benefits. They wanted to work until their time for retirement came and to pay in a fair amount of money to be kept safe for them, and for their loved ones when their time came to pass on.
	I told the campaigners that they desperately needed to put their case before the parliamentary ombudsman—the place for justice in the mother of all Parliaments. I fought hard—and it is hard for a parliamentary candidate—to get the ombudsman to listen to their case. I went to Front-Bench colleagues and asked them to read the file, but they said that they had seen the same thing happen to other schemes and that it should go to the ombudsman.
	The ombudsman decided that the pensioners had been misled under both this Government and the previous Conservative Government, and maladministration had taken place. Like many hon. Members, I was over the moon at that decision. I cracked a bottle of John Smith's with the Dexion pensioners—I am not a champagne man—and we celebrated. That did not last long. They thought that the ombudsman had ruled and that the Government would adhere to the ruling. As the hon. Member for Cannock Chase said, it is not for the ombudsman to decide what should actually happen, especially in a scheme set up 40 years ago, but it is for her to have unrestricted access to the facts and to come to a decision as to whether our constituents had been let down by the system, Parliament and the Government of the day.
	I have just met some of the campaigners, and I apologise for not being present for the whole debate. They still do not understand why the Government did not accept the ombudsman's decision. They have come so far. It is as though a velvet revolution has taken place. The hon. Gentleman said that when he first looked at the issue, he thought that such things happen in a market system, but a groundswell of opinion, led by many Labour Members and others—I have pushed it hard myself since coming here—has convinced my Front-Bench colleagues, the Liberal Democrat Front Bench and Ministers. People who told me 18 months ago that they would never support a scheme under which the Government would compensate those who lost out, because it was not the Government's fault, have now decided—rightly, in my opinion—that they do need help.
	This is not about party politics, as the Minister has joined me in meeting delegations of widows. I shall say more about the widows in a moment, but the Secretary of State, only days after taking up his post, also met a delegation that I brought to him. I passionately believe that the Department for Work and Pensions wants to settle this matter once and for all. None of us has any doubt about that, so why on earth can it not be resolved today?
	The Minister has made another move in our direction, and the Treasury seems to have come up with some extra money so that he can compensate the 8,000 people who are not covered by present schemes. We may not know where the money has come from, but we know that it is available. In the greater scheme of things, the sum involved is, frankly, peanuts. I am proud to be a member of the Health Select Committee, and we know that Government spending on the NHS now totals £100 billion. Where it goes is another question, but that is a huge amount. In contrast, we are talking about only £30 million a year to compensate the people who have lost out. That sum is expected to rise to around £100 million, and then fall again.
	I share the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase. I do not understand why my party's Front-Bench spokesmen do not agree with the proposal. I have said that to them in private, and now I do so in public. We are talking about only 30 million quid, so we should make it available today. The lifeboat scheme that we have come up with has been prepared with the help of hon. Members of all parties. I hope that we will be able to vote on it later, because it will provide immediate help for the people who need it. They need that help today, not in six months or a year. Those who are in trouble cannot wait until the next Pension Bill, about which my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) spoke earlier, because many of them are dying.
	Of course, some are dying of old age or illness, but most are not the sort that we would expect to die early. The fact is that stress-related problems are leading to many deaths among those who need help. I am sure that hon. Members of all parties are aware of the disproportionate levels of strokes and heart attacks suffered by the people who need our help. They are stressed out beyond belief, and that is because they are honourable people whose personal dignity means that they do not want to rely on means-tested benefits or charitable hand-outs. They worked all their lives and paid for their pensions, and they want to retire with dignity. Even so, many of them have taken up jobs that most hon. Members would refuse.

Michael Weir: I, too, will be brief. I want to support new clause 25 tabled by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright).
	I very much welcome what the Minister said about assistance schemes this afternoon, although it is a pity that we do not have the provisions before us so that we can see exactly what he is proposing. I know that the provisions of new clause 25 would deal with my concerns about a pension scheme in my constituency, but I am not sure whether the Minister's proposals would cover that scheme.
	The problems with schemes for solvent employers have poisoned the well of pension reform for far too long. They have been left out of the financial assistance scheme, although there is little to choose between what has happened to them and to insolvent employers. I cite the case of a scheme in the small burgh of Kirriemuir in my constituency. The company remains in being—indeed, it provides valuable jobs in the community—yet workers nearing retirement find that their pensions provide nothing like the sums they expected. The scheme is being wound up and the value of each pensioner's pot is to be paid into a private pension scheme. An employee described for me the situation when they were told that the scheme was being would up: they were told, in effect, "It's your pension or your job". It is difficult for people in small communities to come to terms with that.
	I am told that the company would have gone into insolvency had the scheme not been wound up. The wind-up started in June 2004 and has not yet completely finished, so I want to be sure that people such as my constituents would be covered by the new aspects of the financial assistance scheme that the Minister announced today. I am sure that new clause 25 would cover their situation, but it is a great pity that we do not have the Minister's proposals. What tests will he apply in relation to insolvency? What evidence will a company have to produce before it can be covered by the new scheme? In the case I described, the employees were told that the company would go into insolvency unless the scheme was wound up.
	What made things worse for many employees in that case was that the pension scheme was put under a trustee company, which was also undertaking the winding-up process, and workers found it difficult to obtain information. They were told that the cost of answering their questions about the wind-up of the scheme would be set against its assets, thus further reducing the amount available to pensioners. A circular from the trustee company states:
	"Please remember that there is a cost to answering questions from members, meaning that the funds in the scheme will be further depleted."
	Not unnaturally, members wondered what to do. Should they pursue their interests, or would that mean that they were throwing away even more of their money? They were in an impossible situation.
	If the scheme that the Minister has announced covers such people, it is very welcome indeed, but as has been said by other Members we need clarity today; this poisoned situation must not drag on. We cannot move on with pension reform, in particular the personal accounts that the Government propose, unless we deal with the problems now.
	I intend to support the cross-party amendments on the lifeboat fund, but new clause 25, or a similar provision, must be passed in conjunction with them if we are to bring justice to all the pensioners who have suffered in this disaster.

Sandra Osborne: I thank the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) for curtailing his comments, and I shall try to curtail mine.
	On 22 January 2002, I was fortunate enough to secure a debate in Westminster Hall that allowed me to raise the plight of more than 1,000 former workers of United Engineering Forgings in the United Kingdom who had lost most of their expected pensions when the company went into administration. Since then, as we have heard, along with my colleagues on the Labour Benches, I have tabled early-day motions, tabled amendments, met Ministers and generally campaigned with the trade unions for a solution to what I still see as a major injustice.
	The Government recognised that injustice and the fact that hard-working people had been affected, but they did not recognise that compensation was required. However, as other hon. Members have said in the debate today, we achieved incremental success in securing help for those who lost out and, crucially, legislation has been passed to ensure that never again will people be deprived of the pensions that they have paid into all their working lives.
	The Government have said at every stage of the debate so far that they have gone as far as they can go, and subsequently, they have gone further. So I am very interested to hear what the Minister said about the fact that they are prepared to go further again. There is no question but that a substantial amount of public money has been allocated to the financial assistance scheme—something that has not been adequately recognised in the debate or in general over the past five years.
	The Conservative party said before the last election that it would not commit any further public money than had been committed already to the financial assistance scheme. I wonder whether I can take from that that the Conservatives would not have come up with the £8 billion that is now in the pension pot?

Nigel Waterson: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to introduce new clauses 7 and 29, and amendment No. 3, which were tabled by my hon. Friends and myself.
	New clause 7 is concerned with the design of personal accounts. As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that is the new system that the Government have introduced to encourage pension saving, which is based on the proposals in the Turner report. So that there is no doubt, the official Opposition wish the personal accounts system to succeed, so we wish it to be designed properly. We do not wish to inherit a system that is flawed or designed to fail. New clause 7 is largely taken from that part of the Government White Paper that sets out the criteria for the operation of personal accounts. However, there is a serious philosophical difference between the Government and ourselves on this part of the Bill. They are far too keen to set up the personal accounts delivery authority and leave it to the authority to sort out the detailed design of personal accounts and make all the difficult decisions. We do not see it that way at all. There are serious issues that need to be addressed now, and in the next pensions Bill—there is always another pensions Bill around the corner—by politicians. I am not suggesting for a moment that we should second-guess the experts on the detailed technical stuff, but it is the job of politicians to make decisions about the broad structure of personal accounts and the way in which they sit alongside existing pension provision.
	I am delighted that we are supported by such bodies as the Association of British Insurers, which we heard about a little earlier, and the National Association of Pension Funds. The ABI, in its briefing that it produced for the debate, states:
	"The Delivery Authority needs sound governance and clear objectives...They should be set out on the face of this Bill, which is not currently the case".
	It emphasises the need to
	"take account...of the potential impact on the existing pensions market, including the need for a level regulatory playing field; ensure that Personal Accounts are designed to focus on the target market"—
	I shall return to that in a moment—
	"...and avoid taxpayer subsidy by ensuring all costs are ultimately recovered".
	The NAPF says similar things. It believes that
	"the PADA should be given clear statutory objectives in this Bill."
	It goes on to say:
	"In particular, we think it is vital that PADA's objectives include minimising the impact of Personal Accounts on existing good quality pension provision."
	Indeed, at a seminar on 16 January this year, which I was not privileged to attend—I cannot imagine what I was doing that day—the Minister told an NAPF audience that the personal accounts system would have
	"a specific legal objective of ensuring that the impact on the existing market is minimised".
	We need to hear more about whether he has resiled from that position, intends to accept our new clause, or merely intends to put that clear legal objective into the next pensions Bill. The NAPF goes on to say that
	"PADA should be set an objective to ensure that it operates in such a way that does not interfere with existing occupational or personal pension schemes."
	We entirely endorse that point of view.
	On Monday this week, at a seminar organised by Scottish Widows, Mr. Robert Wyllie of Scottish Widows had some trenchant things to say along similar lines. He talked about the target market, the initial capital requirement of between £1 billion and £2 billion for establishing personal accounts, the need to enshrine the lack of a Government subsidy for the delivery authority, and the need for a level playing field. Of the contribution limit, which I will deal with in more detail in a moment, he said:
	"Frankly there is no way to guarantee that Personal Accounts will not lead to some degree of levelling down."
	At the same seminar, the highly respected pensions guru, Mr. Alan Pickering, said that it was the role of politicians to make these key decisions rather than the people running the delivery authority.
	Many of the points set out in the new clause are, I hope, largely uncontroversial, not least because they were, as I say, lifted almost word for word from the Government's own White Paper. I particularly want to concentrate on paragraphs (a), (b) and (e). Paragraph (a) refers to
	"ensuring that the overall outcome, taking account of the impact on the existing market, is an increase in the number of people saving and the overall amount being saved",
	paragraph (b) refers to
	"optimising levels of participation and contribution among the target group",
	and paragraph (e) refers to
	"minimising the impact on other high-quality pension provision".
	That is because we, and the pensions industry, are worried about mission creep—no reflection on the Minister intended.
	The best indicator of that is the Government's attitude to the contribution cap. The Turner commission could not have been clearer in its recommendation that it should be set at £3,000, and the official Opposition agree with that level. It is a ground for genuine concern that the Government inexplicably announced that they wished to increase it to £5,000, which would mean that personal accounts could include nearly 95 per cent. of existing pension savers, thereby straying a long way from the concept of the target audience. We were therefore delighted when in a recent answer at DWP questions the Secretary of State said that he was reconsidering the level of the cap. That is a relief for us, as an increase to £5,000 would be unacceptable and would jeopardise the future of consensus building between the main parties.
	Some argue for an even higher cap or no cap. With all due respect, I believe that they are misguided and fail to grasp that the point of personal accounts is to target the unpensioned. We therefore wish to make it clear that the success or failure of personal accounts crucially depends on increasing not only the number of savers but savings overall.
	Proposed paragraph (b) is self-explanatory. The point is to optimise participation among the target group as defined in the Government's White Paper. Proposed paragraph (e) expresses our concern about the dangers of levelling down. It is said that some levelling down has already occurred and, with more than 60,000 schemes closed on the Government's watch, that can hardly be denied. The Minister is fond of saying that there is currently nothing to stop levelling down. However, how many companies, having calculated the cost of increased participation based on auto-enrolment, will be tempted to close their existing and more generous schemes and point their employees towards personal accounts? It will be all too easy for the contribution levels inherent in personal accounts to be perceived as the norm whereas they will not deliver a comfortable retirement.
	Much work remains to be done on restricting transfers, exclusions and the sort of quality mark that the NAPF proposes for existing schemes. However, the contribution cap is an important litmus test of the Government's true intentions in the Bill. Do they genuinely intend to target those groups in society that do not save for their retirement or are they more concerned with the back-door nationalisation of the most successful private pensions system in the world?
	New clause 29 deals with means-testing, which is a cancer that eats away at saving for retirement. It can be intrusive and demeaning and it is no guarantee that help will get to those who need it most. Pension credit has tested to destruction the theory that means-testing is the answer to poverty. Some 1.5 million people who are entitled to pension credit do not claim it, and some 2 million pensioners live in poverty in this country. The ABI—I am happy to rely on its views on the matter and on many other issues—stated that much greater clarity was needed on the Bill's impact on future levels of means-testing. That is absolutely right.
	There are conflicting views about means-testing, even in Government. The Chancellor is keen to extend the number of people who depend on the state. He has vastly increased the number of people who are employed by the state. Approximately a third of people—more in Scotland—depend on the state for all or part of their livelihood. Nearly 50 per cent. of pensioners are already subject to means-tested benefits.
	To their credit, Department for Work and Pensions Ministers, in extolling the virtues of their pension reforms, point to the fact that, if we go on as we are, some 80 per cent. of pensioners will be means-tested by the middle of the century. On any view, the likely amount of means-testing after the reforms will be crucial to the success or failure of personal accounts.
	As the official Opposition, we naturally wish savings to be restored to the sort of levels that prevailed under the previous Conservative Government. Will personal accounts achieve that? I believe that the answer depends on whether means-testing can be reduced significantly. It was clear, even before the Bill was introduced, that significant differences existed between the Government's projections on means-testing and those of independent bodies such as the Pensions Policy Institute. It reaches sharply different conclusions from those of the DWP.

Danny Alexander: It is a pleasure to have become involved at this late stage in such an important Bill. I have observed its progress closely, although my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) has been very much in the driving seat.
	Let me say a little about amendment No. 7. It dwells in detail on points that the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) made in his speech. It seeks to provide a mechanism for clarifying some of the issues he described about the likely extent of continued means-testing under the new arrangements proposed in the Bill and to offer objective analysis of that issue. It also seeks to offer analysis of the likely returns that different groups of people who will be auto-enrolled into personal accounts might expect to receive.
	The hon. Member for Eastbourne referred to a seminar that I and many other Members attended. It sought to clarify the difference between various assessments—principally the Government's assessment and that of the Pensions Policy Institute—of the proportion of people who will be subject to means-testing under the Government's proposed pension arrangements. It forecast that the proportion will probably be about 29 per cent.—that is still its central estimate—but the PPI has suggested that about 45 per cent. of pensioners are likely to be subject to means-testing. The seminar clarified the reasoning behind those different estimates. As someone who is not a pensions expert, the evidence seemed to me to leave a wide range of possibilities about the proportion of people who will be auto-enrolled into personal accounts and who will continue to be in receipt of means-tested pension benefits.
	That will have a substantial impact on how worth while it is for someone to save in a personal account and on other aspects of their personal circumstances. In particular, it will have a significant impact on the likely returns that people who are auto-enrolled into personal accounts can expect to receive. That is the subject of proposed new subsection (2A)(b), which requires the delivery authority to publish estimates of the proportion of people
	"auto-enrolled into personal accounts who can be expected to secure returns of—
	(i) £2 or more for every £1 saved,
	(ii) £1 or more for every £1 saved,
	(iii) less than £1 for every £1 saved".
	Clearly, the range of possibilities is wide. My hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) made it clear in Committee that there seems to have been a degree of uncertainty and confusion from the Government about the proportion of people likely to expect those differing levels of returns. On Second Reading, the Secretary of State said in response to a question from my hon. Friend that
	"the vast majority of people will be able to look forward with some confidence to receiving £2 back for every £1 put in."—[ Official Report, 16 January 2007; Vol. 455, c. 665.]
	Subsequently, the Department for Work and Pensions issued a paper entitled "Financial incentives to save for retirement", which stated that
	"the system that we propose, in combination with the introduction of personal accounts, will see the large majority of people...expecting a payback well in excess of £1...for every £1".
	There is a substantial difference between a payback of £1 for £1 and of £2 for £1. Looking forward, it might be difficult for Ministers and their officials to work out with any degree of certainty what the returns are likely to be. The purpose of amendment No. 7 is to require the delivery authority to do so.
	The timing suggested in our amendment is important. We want the estimates to be brought forward by the authority no later than 1 December 2007. That would ensure that the figures, analysis and information that the personal accounts delivery authority was able to provide through its expert analysis would be available to the House, before it completed its consideration of the Bill that will no doubt be introduced in relation to personal accounts, to inform its judgments about the proportion of those auto-enrolled who will be on means-tested benefits, and the likely returns that they can expect. That information should be in the public domain and before the House so that it can form a big part of the debate.
	If 45 per cent. of people are to be in receipt of means-tested benefits, they face some serious risks to saving in the personal accounts into which they will be auto-enrolled. It would be wrong for the House to consider a Bill that would set up such personal accounts without having that important information to hand. We also need to have information about the likely returns of such accounts. Such information is also critical to the marketing and promotion of personal accounts. The hon. Member for Eastbourne mentioned generic advice, but there are big questions about whether saving in personal accounts would be worth while for some people in that category, depending on the outcome in relation to means testing and the returns that they can expect.
	When the Minister responds, I hope that he will be able to reassure us about how he intends to ensure that accurate information, which is as near to definitive as possible—or at least based on as wide a consensus as possible—about those two aspects will be made available to the House. That is what we seek to achieve, and I look forward to the Minister's response.

Sally Keeble: I have not seen the PPI figures, although I shall certainly look at them. I asked the hon. Gentleman to tell me what he considered to be means-tested benefits, because I wanted to clarify his party's approach to them. The Opposition have more serious aspirations to government now, so they—and the Liberal Democrats—must say what they understand by the phrase "means testing".
	Old people do not respond well to being told, "This is good, but that is bad. You can have your personal accounts, but not the other benefits." Some of them will say, "Well, I might be auto-enrolled into the scheme, but I am going to opt out. To get by, I need X, Y and Z, and this, that and the other. Thanks very much, but this savings stuff is not for me."
	It is important that we encourage people to make good self-provision, but we must also recognise that some people will need top-ups of various kinds. There is nothing shameful about that, as that is not means-testing: rather, it shows that the state is doing what it should do—that is, supporting people who make self-provision and making sure that people receive help according to their needs, with dignity and proper services in retirement.

Lynne Jones: I cannot agree that what my hon. Friend has described is not means-testing, although I accept that means-testing is very important and I would not want the incomes that very poor people receive to be reduced. I appreciate her opposition to the Conservative amendment, which is supposed to be a probing one, but what is her opinion of the Liberal Democrat proposal, which I think is very reasonable? It would merely ensure that information is provided to people so that they can decide whether personal provision through an auto-enrolment scheme is worthwhile.

James Purnell: The hon. Gentleman and I have spent so much time in each other's company that he can read my speech even from his sedentary position: that was precisely the issue to which I was about to come. As he knows, the level of the annual contribution is something on which we are consulting. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made clear, we are reconsidering the matter in the light of the responses. However, we want to look at those responses in the round.
	The hon. Gentleman will have received representations about the issue from his new-found friends, the Association of British Insurers, but representations have been made from a range of directions. The Engineering Employers Federation said that there should be no cap at all; the TUC, the Equal Opportunities Commission, Age Concern and other organisations backed the £5,000 limit; while others said that it should be £3,600 or £3,000. For once, I stayed rather longer than the hon. Gentleman at the seminar at the Scottish Widows event on Monday, so he will have missed hearing Jeannie Drake say that the Turner commission would be perfectly happy with the £5,000 figure.
	It is not a question, as some have claimed, of the Government being at odds with the Pensions Commission. The question is really how to achieve the twin goals of focusing the scheme on the target market while also allowing people to make extra contributions if they want. The Pensions Commission has always been very clear that the level of automatic enrolment is a minimum for people to contribute. We want to give enough headroom for people to be able to contribute above that and achieve a higher pension in retirement. We want to balance that with the aim that we have stuck to of targeting the scheme at the market. We will look in great detail at the responses to the White Paper and come back with proposals, which we will be happy to discuss with Opposition Front Benchers, to achieve that balance.
	I hope that I have answered the points raised in the debate about personal accounts and the scheme. The remainder of the debate has focused particularly on means-testing, so I would like to spend a few minutes on that subject. The argument about means-testing often sets up what I believe to be a false choice between whether we should or should not have means-testing. The truth is that all parties know that, whichever Government are in power and whatever scheme they come up with, there will always be a certain amount of means-testing. The question is therefore not whether there should or should not be means-testing, but what is the right balance between universal benefits and means-tested benefits and how fast should we taper away those means-tested benefits.
	I believe that the argument about means-testing is very simple. The argument that I shall seek to develop in the rest of my speech is that we are trying to give people the ability to provide for themselves in retirement and to be well above the level for means-tested benefit. The poverty prevention level or safety net will be there for people if their life does not work out as they hoped and they are not able to make sufficient provision for themselves in retirement.
	I also want to bust a couple of myths about means-testing, because the Opposition sometimes talk as though means-testing has exploded in the past few years. The truth is that the proportion of pensioners who claim means-tested benefits is far lower than in the past. Today, about a third of pensioner families claim means-tested benefits; in 1979, nearly two thirds did so. If our pension system has been affected by the level of means-testing, it should have been affected positively by the trends that have occurred. Indeed, the proportion of pensioner families who claim means-tested benefits has fallen since 1997. The question is not what that has done to saving today, but what can we do to encourage saving in the future. That is exactly what the Pensions Commission considered.
	It was never our intention to continue the current policy framework indefinitely. It was introduced to deal with a problem that we inherited—the level of pensioner poverty—but we recognise that, if it had continued indefinitely, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne said, almost 80 per cent. of pensioners would have been entitled to pension credit in 2050. That is exactly why we never intended to continue it for that length of time.

James Purnell: No, the figure is not going up, exactly because of the Bill, but if that happened the vast the majority of the generation starting work today, who would retire in 2050, would expect to be affected by means-testing once they reach retirement. The reforms recommended by the Pensions Commission and implemented by the Bill address that situation. They make the basic state pension and the state second pension more generous, so that individuals with a good contribution record will be able to retire on £135 a week from their basic state pension and state second pension—well above the level of the pension credit—and their private savings will come on top of that.

James Purnell: When the hon. Gentleman is Pensions Minister in 2050, or even in 2040 or 2030, he will be able to deal with that. We have clearly set out a set of policies that we want to make work. The reason why I am slightly reluctant to answer his question—something that he may have spotted—is that it is a question of what is the right balance to reduce poverty. It is not about picking an abstract number out of thin air. For example, as was persuasively pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble), the Front-Bench team could just say, "We will get rid of council tax benefit and housing benefit." That would reduce means-testing in retirement by a huge proportion, but they would not want to do that because it would push people into poverty unjustifiably. Therefore, we should all aim to create a policy that delivers the right balance between universal benefits and means-tested benefits to ensure that people do not fall into unacceptable levels of poverty.
	People will be able to work or care for their whole lives to get to £135 a week, and the Bill will introduce that important change. People can get to that £135 through a full life of caring, and caring contributions will be put on the same footing as working contributions—something that is extremely welcome—but their private savings will come on top of that. Many long-term savers in personal accounts can expect to get returns of at least £2 for every £1 initially invested by the individual.
	The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) asked whether we could give more definitive projections than that. We will publish further research on the issue, but we will not be able to give definitive projections to people because we cannot tell someone at the age of 22 what their working life will be, any more than we can tell them whether they will be disabled in retirement, whether they will be renting in retirement or, indeed, whether Government policy will have changed when they retire.
	The hon. Member for Eastbourne quoted the example of someone in rented accommodation. Would he really advise people in 2012 not to save when they are 22, because they thought that they might be renting and relying on council tax benefit or housing benefit in retirement? We have no way of knowing what the policy will be in 40 years' time. We can all seek together, through the Bill, to create a consensus, but I warn particularly Liberal Democrat Members about looking for a level of certainty that is so great that it makes the scheme impossible. If the Liberal Democrats want to sign up to automatic enrolment, as I believe that they do, they will have to accept that we will be giving people a reasonable understanding of their future, rather than a perfect 20:20 prediction—no one could aim to do that.
	The large majority of people can expect a good return from personal accounts, but pension credit will provide a safety net of about £119 a week if things go wrong. The key aspect of the reforms is that someone starting off work after personal accounts come in will know that if they work or care for most of their working lives and pay into an account, they will retire on significantly more than the means-tested minimum.
	The Pensions Commission did not suggest eliminating means-testing and nor does any commentator or party in the House. Instead, there is a consensus that we should have a safety net to prevent unacceptable poverty in retirement, which is what pension credit becomes thanks to these reforms. The proportion of people entitled to pension credit will be reduced to less than 30 per cent. by 2050. There will thus be two main groups of people who will benefit from pension credit: those whose working lives did not turn out as they hoped and were not able to make contributions through working or caring to lift themselves above the means-tested level; and, just as importantly—and inconveniently for the policy of the Liberal Democrats—people who get more than £119 in retirement because they are disabled or caring for someone, or because they have other costs. We teased the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) in Committee to tell us whether he planned to take money away from that second group of people, but I assume that he will continue to duck the question, given that that issue is the fatal flaw in his proposal.
	We believe that our proposals strike the right balance between universal benefits and means-tested benefits. We are happy to consider any suggestions that Opposition Front Benchers might make, but in truth there are only two ways in which we could reduce the proportion of people on means-testing. The first way would be to increase the basic state pension to the standard minimum guarantee level of £119 a week, which is somewhere near the policy of the hon. Member for Yeovil. However, without making offsetting changes, that would cost £20 billion, or 5p on income tax. If it were not enough that such a policy would be unaffordable, it is worth noting that it would not get rid of means-testing. It would reduce means-testing by only about a quarter, so while £20 billion would be spent, the hon. Gentleman would still have to decide whether to support automatic enrolment because of, for example, the question of housing benefit, or the situation for people who got more in retirement because they were disabled. Perhaps he will tell us whether he would take money off the people whom we have been discussing for so long.

James Purnell: I will do so happily, provided that the hon. Member for Yeovil also tells us what he would do about the 80 per cent. of people who, in 2050, would be getting more than £119. If the hon. Gentleman wants to tell us what he would do about people who got more than that amount because of disability or carers premiums or their state second pension—if he wants to tell the public that his plan is to take that money away from them—we will be happy to put that information in the Library. We are very happy to put it in the Library anyway, but I was trying yet again, rather pathetically, to get the hon. Gentleman to tell us what his policy is.
	The other way to reduce means-testing, of course, is to take money off poor people. The Tories seem to be saying that they do not want to increase the basic state pension, but they want to reduce the level of means-testing. The only way they could do that is by taking money off poor people, and I do not think that that is what they are planning to do. I am happy to let the hon. Member for Eastbourne intervene on me if he wants to. If that really is the Tories' policy we are happy to debate it with them. Otherwise, the House will have to conclude that they want to make a noise about means-testing in general, without having any proposal to change what the Government are doing. We are happy to have that debate. We think that our proposals strike the right balance between enabling people to save for themselves and providing a safety net for them to fall back on—a safety net that has lifted 2 million people out of pensioner poverty since 1997.
	Amendment No. 7 would require the delivery authority to publish analysis of the interaction of means-testing with personal accounts as well as plans for the delivery of generic financial information. That would place an unnecessary extra pressure on the delivery authority in its initial stages by requiring it to carry out extensive and complex analysis in a short time and to duplicate some work already being undertaken in other areas. The Department for Work and Pensions and other experts will be providing much of the information that the hon. Members for Yeovil and for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey are after. Indeed, we plan to invite them to a further series of seminars to discuss the information base over the next few decades.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss Amendment No. 15, in clause 3, page 3, line 33, at end insert—
	'(d) is in receipt of a certificate under section 23B.'.

Andrew Selous: I will endeavour to be brief as we do not have much time. New clause 28 and amendment No. 15 cover ground that was well covered by our deliberations on clause 3 in the Public Bill Committee. However, it is worth mentioning again the predicament of carers and the reasons why my hon. Friends and I are pleased to support the measures in the Bill that support them, some of which were in our 2005 manifesto.
	There are 6 million carers in the United Kingdom, one in five of whom give up employment to care and have gaps in their pension record as a result. Carers UK estimates that, by 2037, there could be as many as 9 million carers—an increase of 3 million. The Government estimate that the effect of clause 3—which new clause 28 and amendment No. 15 seek to amend—will be that, by 2010, an additional 120,000 carers who care for more than 20 hours a week will gain entitlement to the basic state pension, and that an additional 180,000 such carers will gain entitlement to the state second pension. As the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) has pointed out, that leaves 40,000 people who might not accrue rights to the basic state pension and 60,000 who might not accrue rights to the state second pension, if they do not have 30 qualifying years at pensionable age. It is odd that the Government have sought to base the eligibility criteria for carers' credits on the benefits of the person being cared for, rather than on the circumstances of the carer.
	In Committee, the Minister was big enough to say that the measure in the Bill was not perfect. He said:
	"We are discussing the issue with the Department of Health and will report back before the end of the passage of the Bill".
	He also said
	"extension of eligibility along these lines could be done under regulations made possible by the Bill as drafted." ——[Official Report, Pensions Public Bill Committee, 23 January 2007; c. 62.]
	We all wait eagerly to hear what the Minister will say now that he has had a chance to think about the matter further.
	The net cost per year of providing carers national insurance credit for those caring for more than 20 hours per week for people who are receiving attendance allowance, constant attendance allowance, or the middle or higher-rate care component of disability living allowance will be £800 million by 2050. That was revealed on 29 March in written answer 303 in the House of Lords, asked by Lady Hollis. The Government have already made a considerable financial commitment. Is there a maximum amount that the Government are prepared to spend per year on carers national insurance credit? Will the Minister also tell us, in as much detail as possible, how he proposes to widen the eligibility criteria for the credit?
	I hope that the answers to those questions will be given here rather than in another place, because I think that it would be a courtesy to this House to give us the information now.

James Purnell: I am reporting now and saying that we are committed to doing that. The way to do it is through the carers strategy review, which will report by the end of the year. The Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis) has announced that. It is the right forum. Our commitment to doing this is absolutely clear. We are happy to work with the hon. Member for Solihull and with other Liberal Democrats and the Conservative party, as well as with Carers UK and the Equal Opportunities Commission, on exactly how it can be done, but this is the right way to fill what is just a small gap in the provisions that we have put forward. Everybody shares the same goal. The review will be published before the end of the year. What this will do is put in place the final building block of our carers' strategy to ensure that people can build up a full state pension and a state second pension through caring contributions. Our proposals to reduce the number of qualifying years to 30 will make the major difference, but the carers credit is an important part of putting the roof on the policy, to use the earlier analogy.

James Purnell: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
	The Bill implements the most ambitious reform of our pensions system in modern times. It provides the basis for a sustainable and affordable system that strikes a new balance between the responsibility that Government have for retirement and the responsibility of individuals and their employers. It addresses past inequalities and inadequacies, and embeds in our pensions system the crucial values of fairness and simplicity. Above all, it is based on the foundation of consensus. We have an opportunity to send out a signal to people listening to this debate and reading it in the future that the Bill received a Third Reading on the basis of consensus and agreement on the direction of travel in our pension system and, in particular, on giving people who are putting their money away for the future greater certainty that the system will endure and can be relied on.
	I wish to take this opportunity to thank the many individuals and organisations who have played their part in the Bill's passage. I particularly thank all the members of the Committee for their good humour and dedication to our proceedings. I also wish to thank the two Chairmen who presided over the proceedings. Of course, I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for his support, and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Plaskitt), who led on many clauses in Committee. I also wish to put on record my appreciation—I am sure that it is shared by all my hon. Friends—of my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary, who played an important part in the early formulation of the Bill. On a personal note, I particularly wish to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks), whose support and wise advice throughout the Bill's passage has been invaluable. Finally, I wish to thank the Bill team, which has done a fantastic job, and all those in my Department who have worked on the Bill.
	What will the Bill do? It comes after 10 years of progress in reducing the poverty that we inherited and that had all too often become associated with old age. Since 1997, 1 million pensioners have escaped from relative poverty, and more than 2 million from absolute poverty. We are spending more than £10 billion—or about 1 per cent. of gross domestic product—more on pensioners than we would have had we continued the policies that we inherited in 1997.
	As a result, pensioners' incomes have grown roughly in line with those of people in work. In effect, they have tracked earnings over the past 10 years. For the first time in a generation, therefore, pensioners are less likely to be poor than other groups in society, even though they are not in work and even though people who are in work benefit from increases in earnings. That is a remarkable achievement.
	Earlier this afternoon, the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) said that means-testing was a cancer. I do not agree: on the contrary, it is the generosity of the pension credit system that has enabled us to achieve such an improvement. It must be accepted that mechanisms such as the pension credit system must be introduced if we are to reduce poverty. After all, that is why the Conservative party has supported the uprating of pension credit in line with earnings that will be guaranteed by this Bill.
	The Government have an ambitious vision, and it is one that makes a clear break with the past. Conservative and Labour Governments in the 1980s and 1990s pursued a voluntary approach to retirement provision. I am not trying to score any political points, but the link between earnings and the basic state pension was broken in the early 1980s and, for many years, people—including people in the Labour movement—campaigned for its restoration. However, that was resisted by both the Conservative and Labour parties, because it was not possible to make a formal commitment to a long-term link between earnings and the basic state pension without making it clear how that could be afforded. There would have been no point in talking about plans to restore the link if it was not possible to tell pensioners how that would be done.
	It is the hard choice at the heart of the Bill that will make the Government's approach affordable. Because we have raised the state pension age, we know that it will now be possible formally to restore the link between earnings and pensions, in a way that is both sustainable and affordable. Moreover, we will not place an unfair tax burden on our children and grandchildren as we arrange a more generous retirement for ourselves.

Nigel Waterson: The Minister has referred to "Groundhog Day" at least once this evening. We could go on having this discussion till kingdom come, but it is not going to change anything. I have made it clear more than once what my hon. Friend intended by those words and I cannot add or subtract anything to or from that.
	I was talking about carers and the excellent work done on the Bill by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire. We also broadly support the gradual increase in the state pension age, but we recognise that there is much more to be done in relation to flexible working and retraining for older workers. We have given our broad support to the proposals for personal accounts, but, again, as I explained to some extent in relation to one of the groups of amendments earlier today, we still have serious concerns about the design of the new system and the extent to which we should include in this Bill, rather than the next Bill, the basic parameters of success or failure for the system for personal accounts.
	On Second Reading, I flagged up four major concerns about personal accounts: means testing, the risk of levelling down, the potential for mis-selling, and the issue of confidence. Those concerns still exist. I do not want to develop in any more detail than I have already today the issue of means testing. The Minister and the Pensions Policy Institute will just have to agree to disagree—without being disagreeable about it. They are never going to reach a consensus, and the more the Minister tried to explain his way out of that problem, the more he seemed to say that nobody can ever really know, so we are boldly taking a step into utter darkness with no way of knowing what will happen. The only thing we can say with certainty is that by 2040 or 2050, none of us will still be developing these arguments. Having said that, one of my constituents is 110, so perhaps there is hope for all of us.

Lynne Jones: It is understandable that the financial assistance scheme and the way in which we might help those who have been cheated of their pensions have dominated today's proceedings. I certainly hope that the Government will come back with proposals that are more generous than those on offer. However, the Bill should be setting a solid foundation for the next 50 or so years, so it is most unfortunate that there has been such little time to debate some of its fundamental aspects. I was disappointed that all the concerns that I raised on Second Reading were not addressed in Committee and that they were not even discussed, let alone voted on, on Report. Although there are many welcome provisions in the Bill, especially those relating to pensions for women, I cannot see how the Bill, as it stands, will be a firm foundation for the future.
	My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned Barbara Castle. I am sure that she would have welcomed the provisions for women in the Bill, but I do not think that she would have been proud of the continuation of the means-testing that is still inherent in our pension system and the disincentives for people to save so that they can provide better for themselves than the state can do. Although it is good that the Government have accepted the recommendation of restoring the link to earnings, it will be some time before that happy event takes place. In the meantime, the disparity between the basic state pension and the means-tested pension credit will continue to grow, not narrow. That will mean that more people will be subject to means-testing, which will be counter-productive to our fundamental aims. Sadly, many people will thus be automatically enrolled into the new pension scheme when they would be better off using their money in other ways to save for their future.
	It is unfortunate that we have not been able to have an adequate debate. I ask the Government to bear that in mind when they set out in future the arrangements for the Report stage of such complex and important legislation. For obvious reasons, the Minister talks about affordability when addressing the aim of reducing means-testing and improving the basic state pension. However, we have not been able to debate today the amount of taxpayers' money that is spent on tax relief and the fact that the majority of that money goes to the 5 per cent. of people in our society who are the most wealthy.
	We are shortly to have a new Prime Minister. I hope that this is an issue to which the Government will want to return because if we are really concerned about creating a fair society and encouraging people to do more for themselves, we have to address it. We have to look at ways of ensuring that more resources are directed to those on lower incomes. If that means taking money away from those on higher incomes who have the ability to provide for their old age without substantial largesse from the taxpayer, that is something that a Labour Government should want to do.
	I remain dissatisfied with the Bill, and I hope that there will be an opportunity in the other place to improve on it. I hope that I will be able to be more enthusiastic in supporting it when it comes back to this House.

David Laws: I should like to start on three points of consensus, and I shall try to be brief as other Members still want to speak. First, I echo the Minister's comments in passing on our thanks to those people who have been involved in supporting the Bill through its various stages: the officials in his Department, those who advise us and the lobby groups who sometimes see their ideas and even their words taken up in the debates. We are grateful for all of that.
	We would also like to thank the Minister for the very reasonable way in which he conducted himself throughout the Committee stage and for the fact that he tried, on the whole, to answer our questions. We can only wonder what future there is for a person who displays such qualities in the Government that we are about to get. We wish him all the best with that.
	Perhaps more importantly, we add our congratulations to those of the Minister on the work of the Pensions Commission. It is worth bearing in mind that none of the big measures in the Bill was included in its entirety in the manifesto of any of the four main parties before the last general election. To succeed within a very limited period in proposing a coherent package of reforms and persuading not only the Government, but both main Opposition parties and some of the other groups represented in the House, to accept it is a major achievement. I hope that many of those reforms will last and influence the shape of the pensions system for many years to come. I think in particular of the restoration of the earnings link, the increase in the state pension age, auto-enrolment and the other changes to the pensions contributory system. There is a great deal of consensus on those measures and on the direction of travel, which is why we, too, do not intend to divide the House on Third Reading.
	Earlier, the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) teased me about whether there was a parallel consensus, which only the Liberal Democrats were part of and which could exist alongside the apparent universal consensus on the Pensions Commission's proposals. In fact, there is. I put it to him that if he went to every saloon bar and village hall in the country and held a public meeting on pensions, he would find that there is indeed a parallel consensus on three points. It is perfectly possible to hold both the existing consensus and the parallel consensus in one's mind at the same time. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak described the elements of the parallel consensus in her comments. As the hon. Member for Eastbourne will recognise as I describe them, the elements of that consensus are threefold.
	First, the Government have said that there is a great degree of certainty about the reforms. In their response to the Committee on Work and Pensions, they said:
	"There is no ambiguity around this commitment"—
	for example, in respect of the earnings link. However, that comes as news to many people in this country and in this House who feel that there is a great degree of uncertainty, not least about the arbitrary way in which the earnings link is to be restored, which has created uncertainty and will increase the amount of means-testing in the meantime. There is no guarantee that the state pension will be uprated by the greater of the increases in prices and earnings—the Labour party has dropped its commitment to that. More seriously, there is not even a commitment in the Bill to uprate pensions by a measurable and defined index, which the Engineering Employers Federation has said gives the Secretary of State almost carte blanche to determine the way in which the uprating takes place. That is worrying for all of us, because none of us knows which party will be in government in the future or how they might decide to reinterpret some of the changes made though the Bill. In a nutshell, if one goes to any pensioners' group in the country, one will find a parallel consensus on dissatisfaction with the uncertainty and the long time before the changes take effect. That is why although all of us here may be pleased about the pensions consensus, people in the rest of the country are not.
	Secondly, because the restoration of the earnings link is being delayed and because, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak said, we are building on such a low foundation of the basic state pension—because the Chancellor has insisted that pensions reform takes place in an environment where for 10 years we will not increase the share of GDP that goes to state pensions—we have an enormous amount of means-testing. In the short time left I shall not repeat the entire debate, but today I was interested to hear even the Minister start to moderate his claims about the number of people who will benefit from personal accounts. On Second Reading, the Secretary of State said that the vast majority of people would gain more than £2 for every £1 invested, but today we have been told that a good majority of people will be net gainers—in other words, the claims are being scaled back.
	The Government have not yet been able to answer the point, so I continue to believe that half the target audience for the personal account—people on lower incomes, whose risk of becoming subject to means-testing is greater than it is for the rest of the population—could be subject to means-testing in 2020, 2030 or 2040. A large number of people might find either that the £2 for £1 no-brainer offer that Adair Turner and his commission tried to deliver is not realised for them, or that—worse still—they fall into the small but not negligible category of people who will actually lose by investing in a personal account because of the effect of means-testing not only on the pension credit, but on housing benefit.
	The Government's problem is that the more they deal with the mis-selling problem by not auto-enrolling various groups for personal accounts, or by not making sure that those groups get generic advice, the more they displace the mis-selling problem and make it a take-up problem, in which lots of people who should have personal accounts do not. The Government have yet really to deal with that problem. Some of us have concerns that the Government are building on an unsound foundation. If we are right about those concerns, the personal account part of the package, which we will hear about later this year, could be a failure, and if it is it will pull the rug from under a lot of the reforms, and that will affect what is delivered.
	The final point on the parallel consensus is that people recognise that there are some huge issues with which the Government have not yet dealt. The hon. Member for Eastbourne touched on our disappointment today about pension compensation, but there are bigger issues with which the Government have not yet dealt, including the reform of public sector pensions, and the reform of tax relief in ways that are strongly hinted at in the Pensions Commission report and the Select Committee report.
	The direction of travel is right, but the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) said earlier, on pension compensation, that he feels that the Government have half-built a house. Similarly, on pensions reform, we feel that the house is not yet complete. Given the degree of consensus, we hope that we will not have to advocate knocking down any of the walls in future, but there is a long way to go before the house is completely built, so that we can deliver the pension system that the country really needs for the future.

Julie Kirkbride: I am grateful to be called to speak, and I shall make a brief contribution.
	I largely welcome the provisions of the Bill, even though I am disappointed that the Minister and some of his Back Benchers could not support the cross-party amendment that was tabled earlier—I pay tribute to the Labour Back Benchers who did support it—as it would have greatly benefited my constituents who worked at United Engineering Forgings, which became bankrupt, and at Kalamazoo. They would have greatly appreciated the lifeboat scheme proposed by the Opposition, as they are seeking immediate benefit, because they will not have the security of pension payments for some time. I very much hope that when the Minister has conducted his review, he can reannounce the proposals that the Conservatives introduced today in his own words, and that finally the benefits of the Pension Protection Fund will be available to people who must currently use the financial assistance scheme.
	May I briefly put on record one aspect of the Pensions Bill that is lacking—and I do not think that the Minister will find this surprising? Yesterday, the Minister graciously agreed to meet some of my constituents who took early retirement and are particularly affected by the provisions of the Pensions Act 2004 that immediately cut the pension benefits payable to people who took early retirement. I am not sure that the House anticipated that when it introduced the Bill those people would be uniquely affected by its provisions. For many people, benefits were cut by at least by at least 10 per cent. and in some cases by 70 per cent. of what they were expecting, which has a knock-on effect on their wives' and, indeed, widows' pensions if they pre-decease their spouse.
	A much wider issue is therefore involved. It clearly cannot be addressed today, as the Bill is about to complete its passage in the Commons, but fresh amendments could be tabled in the other place to try to improve the position of people who took early retirement. They are not asking for a great deal—they are just asking for an improvement to their present predicament. The Minister obviously has to cost that with regard to the existing PPF commitments, but we believe that there are ways of taking the issue forward. I implore him to take a further look at the matter, as he said that he would do so. I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the chance to put that on the record in the Chamber.

Gillian Merron: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) on securing the debate. She is a tremendous advocate for the people who work at Gatwick airport, and is highly respected both in the House and outside for being so.
	I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that Gatwick airport is a great success story, not only for the local area—important though that is—but for the United Kingdom as a whole. It supports, directly and indirectly, thousands of jobs and the many business opportunities that underpin the success of the Gatwick diamond and the surrounding areas. I agree that the Gatwick Express announcement was good news for passengers and the local community, and I thank her for her support in the campaign that led to us getting that good news. We are adding more seats and trains on one of the country's busiest rail routes. The need to increase capacity is a great challenge facing the railway industry, and it is a priority for my Department.
	As with all airports, the success of Gatwick depends on the contributions of the many and varied people who work there, including those, such as ground handling staff, whose contribution is often unglamorous and hidden from the public gaze, but without whom the whole operation would quickly grind to a halt. I extend my thanks and congratulations to those who work on the ground—literally—at airports because without them the United Kingdom aviation industry could not continue to offer a first-class service to the travelling public during the many difficult times, such as those that we have gone through lately. I thank them for their co-operation and, in many cases, for their great flexibility.
	I understand the concern of staff at Gatwick over the removal of the existing limit on the number of companies permitted to provide ground handling services. It might be helpful if I set out the regulatory position that gives rise to the situation. It is not correct that there has always been such a limit. Before 1998 there was no limit at all. In that year the Civil Aviation Authority, on an application from Gatwick Airport Ltd, made a determination under the ground handling regulations, which had been implemented in the UK the previous year, to limit to four the number of suppliers of airside ground handling services at Gatwick airport. The CAA subsequently modified the determination in 1999, again on application from the airport, so that the number of suppliers of airside bussing services would be limited to two, rather than four. Both decisions rested primarily on arguments relating to the space and capacity available at the airport at that time.
	It is important to remember that in the 10 years since the ground handling regulations came into force Gatwick has been the only UK airport with a legal limit on the number of handlers allowed to operate. Gatwick Airport Ltd applied to the CAA in April 2006 to have both of the existing limits removed. On 30 May, the CAA published a proposal in its official record and on its website stating that in the absence of clear arguments to the contrary it was minded to accept the judgment of Gatwick Airport Ltd, as the responsible operator of Gatwick airport, that the existing limitations on the number of airside handlers should be removed.
	The CAA asked for representations on this proposal to be made by the end of June. I appreciate my hon. Friend's comments about the effectiveness of the consultation process. The CAA extended the period for comments, which I welcome, following representations from the Transport and General Workers Union, to ensure that the union could make a written submission, which it did in October 2006. The TGWU raised a number of concerns about the possible effects of increased competition in the provision of ground handling services at Gatwick, particularly in respect of security, health and safety, and the capacity of the terminal facilities. The CAA considered the representations carefully and seriously, but found no compelling grounds for it to reject the judgment of Gatwick Airport Ltd. Consequently, it decided to revoke the existing limit on the number of companies permitted to provide ground handling services at Gatwick. The CAA's full decision is set out in its official record, published on 20 February 2007.
	In view of the well-established mechanisms of safety oversight of airport operations by the CAA's safety regulation group and by the Health and Safety Executive, the CAA found no reason to believe that removing the limit would itself have a detrimental effect on health and safety levels. I expect the parties most directly concerned—such as the airport, the airlines and the handling companies—to ensure that any changes to the ground handling arrangements at Gatwick are implemented in a way that does not compromise the safety of staff, which is of paramount importance.
	My hon. Friend asks specifically about the respective roles of the CAA and the Health and Safety Executive. The CAA is responsible for ensuring that risks to civil aviation safety are properly controlled. To this end it seeks to ensure that Gatwick airport is safe for use by aircraft and that operators of aircraft have suitable safety arrangements in place both in the air and on the ground.
	The role of the HSE is to ensure that risks to people's health and safety from work activities are properly controlled. There is a memorandum of understanding between the CAA and the HSE, the aim of which is to ensure co-ordination of policy issues, enforcement activity and investigation in respect of aircraft and the systems in which they operate. The memorandum is available for inspection in the safety regulation group section of the CAA website.
	My hon. Friend also asks what measures are in place to ensure that standards are maintained as a further operator comes on board and whether any impact assessment of manual handling-related injury has been made since 2002. Prior to the removal of the limits, as part of the re-licensing process, Gatwick Airport Ltd undertook an audit involving existing handling companies and the potential new entrant that looked at health, safety, environmental responsibility, security and service standards. I understand that the potential new entrant received a favourable rating. I also understand that the airport is implementing an enhanced safety performance regime with the expectation of improved safety performance across the board.
	My hon. Friend raised two specific health and safety concerns. On weight limits, I understand that the Health and Safety Executive has been successful in working with aircraft operators, ground handling organisations and airports to limit the maximum weight for hold baggage to 32 kg, and that talks are under way to reduce this to 23 kg. This, however, applies only to UK aircraft operators. Otherwise, ground handling operations come within the sphere of the Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992. The regulations do not set specific weight limits for manual handling, but instead recommend that a specific ergonomic assessment should be made to take account of the specific circumstances of each activity to ensure that the health and safety of the work force is assured. I would expect the parties involved to take full account of those recommendations. In the light of my hon. Friend's representations, I have asked officials to look at ways in which that matter can be raised at a European level and I will be happy to get back to her on that point.
	The provision of chutes and lifts in areas where staff regularly have to handle manual items such as wheelchairs is essentially a matter for the airport's management. As part of the development of the airport's capital expenditure programme, I would expect that to be the subject of consultation between the airport and its customer airlines, which are likely to have in mind the implications for their ground handling suppliers of investing—or of failing to invest—in facilities that support ground handling activities.
	I am aware that concern has been expressed about the space to accommodate extra handlers. The CAA accepted Gatwick's contention that congestion was primarily a function of peak passenger demand at the airport, rather than being related to the number of ground handlers operating. In its 1998 decision, the CAA had noted that it would be possible to review the limit on the number of handlers should circumstances change significantly from those then prevailing at Gatwick. The CAA said that it now expected Gatwick airport to work with all handlers to ensure that adequate space was sought and used appropriately.
	The CAA notified all interested parties of its decision to remove the limit on the number of ground handling service providers at Gatwick on 14 February 2007. Gatwick airport was therefore free to appoint a fifth handler at any time after this date.
	I understand what my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley said about the speed with which a fifth operator was announced, and her observation that that generated scepticism about the consultation process among existing ground handling staff. However, I can assure both her and them that the airport's preparations had no effect on the CAA's decision.
	I understand that the airport had to act rapidly to complete the appointment, as a number of the existing ground handling contracts were due to expire at the end of March. An orderly handover of business was needed, in the interests of the airport and of its customers and staff.
	I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley for speaking up on behalf of people who are an integral part of the Gatwick airport team. I assure both her and her constituents that I shall continue to take a close interest in the matters that have been raised in the House tonight.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty - five minutes past Seven o'clock.